Review: Master’s Selection London Dry Gin

You don’t have to make London Dry Gin in London, England. Turns out you don’t have to make it in Great Britain at all. Case in point: Master’s Selection London Dry Gin, which is made in Barcelona, Spain by a family-owned distillery that dates back to 1835.

Process-wise Master’s is a bit unique: Grain alcohol is redistilled in a pot still with Spanish estate-grown juniper, Spanish coriander, and Guatemalan cardamom. After this round, three separate macerations of Spanish citrus are introduced: sweet orange from Valencia, bitter orange from Seville, and lemons from Seville. Each of these macerations is rested separately for a full year being blended together and distilled again. At last, the juniper-coriander-cardamom distillate is blended with the citrus distillate and bottled in a cobalt blue (and, tragically, plastic-looking-but-actually-glass) decanter.

With all that talk of oranges, Master’s better pack some citrus power, and sure enough it does. In fact, there’s so much of it here you might mistake it for a citrus vodka instead of a gin. There’s ample sweetness here; rather than using just the peel as is traditional in gin, Master’s includes whole fruit, and some of that juiciness has found its way into the finished product. That’s not a complaint, and the citrus is well complemented here by the comparably modest juniper and coriander notes.

Ultimately and despite the convoluted production process, this is a perfectly drinkable but far from complex gin. Citrus, then juniper, then a dusting of Asian spice… that’s really about it. This isn’t a big martini gin (or much of a London Dry for that matter), but it’ll work with fruitier cocktails — or even sub in for orange-flavored vodka. Price is right, too.